The seminar will be based on the article written by Martin Kragh, Erik Andermo and Liliia Makashova detailing how the use of conspiratorial notions is widespread and tolerated within important Russian military institutions and official think tanks, and among Russian security experts and military professionals. The conspiratorial notions systematically support a larger conspiratorial worldview, which in its basic orientation is anti-Western, illiberal and which reinforces an image of Russia as under threat. That worldview has been used by Russia’s political and military leaders in order to legitimize Russian foreign policy conduct – for example the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the military intervention in eastern Ukraine, or the Syria intervention in 2015 –, but also in order to explain the targeted repression of different domestic groups, as necessary from a national security point of view. The article outlines three policy implications regarding the understanding of Russian foreign policy conduct.

Martin Kragh holds a PhD from the Stockholm School of Economics (2009) and is associate professor (docent) at the Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies (IRES). Martin Kragh is Head of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. Kragh's research interests include Russia's economy and history, but also the political development in Russia and the former USSR.